Dennis, you wrote
> I don't know much about this period - I'm only feeling my way in
response to
> your interesting discussions with Glen. I got this info from what
seemed an
> impeccable source :
> http://agronomy.ucdavis.edu/gepts/PB143/lec10/pb143l10.htm
> quoting a J.R. Harlan 1971, American Association for the
Advancement
of
> Science. However no dates were given, but Ethiopia was listed
alongside 7
> other centres.
> Either way, it seems more likely that the AfroAsiatic languages
point of
> departure was Ethiopia, rather than the middle of the Sahara, as
shown in
> your map (which BTW I had no trouble downloading - but I've got MS
> Powerpoint here), with Egyptian moving north, Semitic across the
Horn of
> Africa into Arabia, and Chadic west (Berber and Omotic being
somewhat
> later).
The Ethiopian origin for Afro-Asiatic also runs counter to what is
known archaeologically. With the exception of the Middle East,
mountain areas tend to be refugaria for languages not centres for
dispersal. The sequence for cultures suggests that it was the Sahara
that was both a centre for dispersal and also for cultural innovation
until almost pre-Dynastic times in Egypt.
This was for a number of reasons.
1. Aterian culture (circa 30,000 BCE) from Algeria was the first
culture to use the bow and arrow and also the first to use
microliths.
They spread widely across the Sahara during the Pluvial (wet). In
the
dry period that followed people using microlithic and bow
technologies retreated into the Nile Valley, Nubia and thence into
East Africa. By influencing cultures in Egypt, eventually when the
Kebaran microlithic culture crossed into Palestine they carried the
bow and arrow and microlithic broad spectrum hunting and gathering
technologies with them. Based upon the dates, Glen and I seem to
have
agreed this was probably the introduction of Nostratic peoples into
the Middle East.
2. The Sahara seems to have been fully abandoned circa 18,000 BCE,
during the height of the last glacial and the maximum extend to the
desert (even more than today). Human habitation was confined to the
margins. In North Africa the Capsian microlithic culture developed
which in the following return to wet and damp conditions( circa
12,000-10,000 BCE), spread across the Sahara, into Nubia and
eventually as far as Omo in East Africa. This seems to have been the
spread of the first Afro-Asiatics (Chadic, Cushitic, Omotic).
Developing out of Capsian culture (From Capsa in North Africa) the
Ibero Maurasian culture carried mesolithic broad spectrum hunter
gathering across the Straits of Gebralta into Spain from 10,000 -
8,000 BCE. These were the mesolithic farmers who met the Cardial
neolithic fisher-farmer culture arriving from the Aegean. It appears
that they formed a "fusion culture" known as the First Western, that
introduced farming technologies north of the Pyrennies and into
France
and Britain. If there is an Afro-Asiatic substratum to Celtic, this
is probably it.
3. From the Capsian came two major breakthroughs. The first was the
development of pottery. Pottery techniques spread new cultures
across
the Sahara into Nubia by 7,000 BCE. The cultural change must not be
minimised. It made possible food storage and the beginnings of
craft specialisation. At the same time, these hunter gatherers
depended upon hunting long horned bos primogenatus (?I may have the
species spelled wrong?) cattle, which they herded into valleys and
fenced. By 6,000 BCE there is some evidence that the cattle were
becoming semi-domesticated, and by 5,500 BCE it seems that a stage
comparable to full domestication was achieved. In any case, genetic
studies demonstrate that Africa was one of three sites for the
domestication of cattle (the others being India (Zebu cattle), and
Anatolia. The African genetic studies shows cattle were domesticated
at approximately this period.
The innovation of pottery travelled in advance of the cow. Cattle
were not introduced into Egypt until the coming of the neolithic out
of Palestine (about 4,800 BCE). The reason for this is that the
Northern Nile Valley always supported a rich fauna of plants, animals
and fishing, that could exist almost independently of the Saharan wet
and dry phases. Pottery, however was a different matter, and clear
evidence that the early pottery of Egypt was Saharan in origin is
available. The Potters seem to have been the second wave of
Afro-Asiatics (Berbers, Egyptians and Semites). By 5,700 the drying
out of the Sahara was leading to another retreat across the Margins.
Saharan elements are found at Fayyum and across the Nile Delta into
the North Eastern part of the Eastern Desert and Sinai. They
specialised in surviving in mobile tribes in arid and semi arid
conditions. The Southern Eastern Desert seem to have been inhabited
by Capoid peoples, who in historic times emerged as the Beja.
4. The increasing aridity, circa 5,600 BCE led to the abandonment of
Pre Pottery Neolothic B (Yarmukian) sites in southern Palestine,
allowing Afro-Asiatic people to cross the Sinai. Adopting a nomadic
pastoral lifestyle based upon exploitation of ovicaprids (sheep and
goats). This was the first pottery using culture in the Levant,
drawing upon the styles and traditions of northern Egypt and the
delta. This culture saw a massive introduction of Near Eastern
agricultural terminology into the Afro-Asiatic language of the new
arrivals. It was this fusion which eventually led to the creation of
the Semitic family of Afro-Asiatic. The Ghassulian recovery which
followed, saw the spread of Afro-Asiatic cultures spread elsewhere in
the Middle East. This culture was roughly contemporaneous with the
chalcolithic Halafian culture (linked to the historic spread of
Hurrian peoples), and the spread of agriculture towards southern
Iraq.
During the Ghassulian recovery, sheep and goat herding nomadic
pastoralists began to spread down the Arabian shoreline of the Red
Sea and to occupy interior Arabia (which had been abandoned 5,600
BCE). In the Ubaid period, a thoroughly successful settlement of
Southern Iraq led to a huge population expansion, and the
establishment of long distance trade down the Persian Gulf as far as
Oman, and upwards throughout Mesopotamia as far as northern Lebanon.
It seems that the Ubaid culture pioneered the spread of boule, clay
tokens indicating numbers of sheep, goats, cattle and amounts of
trade, throughout the Near Eastern Region. These tokens were later
copied for accounting purposes onto clay tablets during the Jemdet
Nasr and Uruk periods by Sumerian scribes, beginning the historic
Sumerian civilisation, about 3,300 BCE.
Ubaid pottery finds are clustered around Bahrein. It appears that
the
mesolithic peoples who had managed to survive here, remnants of a
group which had hitherto spread over much of Arabia, abandoned their
settlements en mass, to move to Southern Iraq during the Jemdet Nasr
and Uruk periods associated with a renewed widespread dessication of
the Middle East. Whether this was due to an inability to cope with
increasing aridity, a taste for a gentler, more refined way of life
offered in southern Mesopotamia, or was due to pressure from
expanding
tribes of nomadic pastoralists better capable of adapting to semi
arid
conditions, is not known. Nevertheless, the new ethnic group that
arrived from Bahrein into Southern Mesopotamia, settling first at the
port city of Eridu, were the historic Sumerians. Semitic pastoralist
settlement only penetrated as far south as the City of Kish, where
from early Dynastic times, rulers with Semitic names have been found.
Employed first as shepherds and mercenaries, they quickly rose to
prominence, eventually dominating the Ubaidian peoples (probably
Hurrian, or speaking a related language). Nevertheless much of the
substrait language survived within both Semitic and Sumerian
languages, particularly for place names, agricultural terms, and a
number of crafts.
5. From about 4,800 BCE, the mesolithic peoples of Egypt were coming
under the influence of the spread of Neolithic cultures from the
Middle East, and from cattle herding cultures spreading from the
Sahara and the Sudan. At first agriculture seems to have been
incorporated into a lifestyle still largely dominated by fishing,
fowling and hunting larger game (hippopotamus and crocadile). By the
onset of the Badarian culture, a fusion of farming and cattle raising
was complete, and status differences were beginning to increase.
Long
distance trade into Nubia, Palestine and across the Sahara as far as
the Chad Highlands is attested. An influx of Asiatic elements
(introducing Middle Eastern terminology into the developing Egyptian
language) occurred with the arrival of the Amratian and Gerzian
chalcolithic cultures and the spread of copper smelting. This
cultminated in the arrival of the "Dynastic peoples" who established
themselves in confederacies of chiefdoms in the middle Nile, and as a
warrior elite, succeeded in pushing Egypt across the hurdle into a
unified monarchy under Narmer and Aha.
> > Dennis wrote
> > >Given that the lower Nile valley was probably
> > >impenetrable marshy jungle, isn't it more likely they came via
the
> > >grasslands of the Arabian peninsula, bringing their Ethiopian
> > >agricultural techniques (and Ubaid pottery) with them?
> >
> > The "impenetrability" of the lower Nile in pre-historic times was
not
> > that impenetrable. It was the route that Aurignacians took on the
> > movement from North Africa to Palestine 40,000 BCE.... and also
the
> > route by which Sebilian III mesolithic culture, transmogrified
into
> > Kebaran entered Palestine circa 15,000 BCE.... The Semites
followed
> > the same routes. There is also no evidence of Ethiopian
techniques
> > or crops (eg. tef, finger millet, coffee) in Arabia. The
> > domesticates
> > for Ubaid were all Middle Eastern in origin, and Ubaid shows a
clear
> > derivation from the previous cultures of the Middle East (see
above).
> >
>
> Yes, but weren't these movements in drier phases? The period we're
talking
> about here was, I believe, a period when the Sahara and Arabia were
> reasonably well watered grasslands. Which would suggest that the
Nile valley
> and Fayyum would have been much wetter and therefore more lush.
> Also I'm not suggesting that the Semites brought their crops with
them, just
> the knowledge of agriculture.
Dennis, knowledge of agriculture and cropping tend to spread
together.
It is unlikely that a culture will move into an area where crops are
ecologically suitable (eg as Ethiopian ensete, finger millet and
sorghum are in the Egyptian environment) and drop these crops, whilst
awaiting the arrival of a suite of crops and domestic animals
arriving
from another direction (wheat, barley, goats and sheep from
Palestine). Knowledge of agriculture in this part of the world began
about 8,500 BCE in the rain fed foothills in Anatolia, Zagros and
Lebanon. The knowledge disseminated from this core, westwards into
the Aegean and Balkans, southwards into Palestine and Egypt and
eastwards into Iran and Pakistan. Knowledge of agriculture may
expand
in advance of a movement of peoples, but it is likely that the
language of the earlier agriculturalists will spread with that
knowledge. Eventually demographic pressures from the cultures with
the more intensive technology (the farmers) will see a movement of
peoples as well.
Dennis wrote
> The IE word for wheel seems to be well established in IE from /kWel/
> "revolve". So maybe the similarity is just that - or coincidence or
> contamination (in the linguistic sense).
There were certainly a large number of "wander words" that created a
common cultural base in the Middle East that is hard to unravel. It
would appear that with the spread of farming a type of "Balkanisation
occurred" as words from one language would freely enter those of
their
neighbours and borrowing would return the favour. Thus farming began
with the hill folk, who probably spoke a North Eastern Caucasian
language - possibly even before a clear split between Khattic and
Hurrian (?). These people also had monopoly control over the
obsidian
trade, from Anatolia and Armenia. But Sumerian words, and later
Akkadian and Western Semitic entered into the cultural melange. A
high proportion of the population in each of the cultures I have
mentioned were probably bilingual and possibly trilingual in some
cases. Languages seem to have emerged with different functional
specialisations - Hurrian for agriculture and the crafts, Semitic for
nomadic pastoralism and military affairs, Sumerian for governance.
These functional specialisations spread the influence of languages
far
beyond their "borders". The way in which Roumanian, Greek, South
Slavic and Albanian have come to adopt elements of shared vocabulary
and even phonetic and grammatic features in the Balkans is a good
example of what appears to have happened. Indo-European languages
and
Tyrrhenian both seem to have drawn from this melting pot.
Hope this helps
John